


The Rains of Fodlan

by CazBunny



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: AKA Two Idiots cause problems for themselves instead of just talking, Angst, Angst Angst & More Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Azure Moon - Freeform, Cathedral Smut, Dimitri x F! Byleth, Eventual Resolution, F/M, Falling In Love, First Time, Idiots in Love, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Jeralt Deserved Better, Love/Hate, Mentions of Sylvix because I'm weak for them, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Soul-Searching, Thunder and Lightning, Warped self perceptions are a hell of a thing, dimileth, dimyleth, smut smut smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2020-10-11 12:03:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20545865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CazBunny/pseuds/CazBunny
Summary: Five years after an unexpected slumber, Byleth is still trying to come to terms with the blessing bestowed upon her by Sothis and measure up to the holy expectations that come with it. It doesn't help that a certain prince has taken a headlong plunge into the darkness and threatens to drag her down with him. It doesn't take long for Byleth to learn that, sometimes, getting what you want is worse than spending a lifetime wondering about what could have been.Or, the two times Dimitri leaves and the one time he stays.





	1. Tempest

The full moon hangs lonesome in the misty night as the wind brushes heavy clouds across its unblemished face. Beneath its watchful eye, Byleth crosses the bridge to the cathedral. The wind rakes its fingers through her hair, mussing the mint locks beyond repair, but she doesn’t slow to swipe the strands from her eyes. She only blinks them away and continues on her solitary trek, a shadowy pilgrim en route to foreign land.

The doors open easily for her, but they groan in their exertion and, when they slam shut, they startle her with a clap of conjured thunder. Her hand splays over her unbeating heart as the sound hangs in the cavernous cathedral like a suicide’s ghost. But the room is empty, save for her and an emaciated rat that scurries from her with glinting, ruby eyes and a morsel of food tucked into its cheek. Before her, an avalanche of marble and tile covers the space that once held an altar and pulpit. Cold wind howls through the weeping wound in the ceiling. The walls glisten like water by the light of the dusky moon.

Normally, Byleth avoids the cathedral and the bittersweet memories of hymns sung to a hollow heaven, but tonight, she has decided to try something new. Even though it has been five years and she has since been Goddess blessed, she kneels before the rubble and prays to the emptiness in her head and the memory of her father for guidance and clarity. No answer comes, but quiet, directed reflections seems a better use of her time than staring into the coalescing shadows of her bedroom and hoping for them to swallow her whole.

Praying is something she has seen others do and it is these others that she tries to imitate. She bows her head like Ignatz and kneads her hands together like Mercedes and she addresses the Goddess by name like Marianne. On her assigned rounds through the cathedral during her time as a professor, she would enjoy the gentle sight of the students in prayer, imagining each of them shimmering with holy light. Of course, Sothis thought the whole thing foolish and would tell her as much.

_“Why do they pray to someone who never answers?” _she would often ask. At the time, the crass dismissal irritated Byleth, but, now, it tempts her to smile, given the circumstances. Yet, as all memories of Sothis do, it ultimately knots her stomach. Much time has passed, but, for Byleth, the pain of Sothis’ departure is still fresh. So, she prays to the memory of her cherished friend and foolishly waits for a snide reply.

As her legs cramp and her back aches, Byleth thinks of her father, winces at the thought of his gruff frown at the sight of her hobbled in prayer. Jeralt raised her on the milk of chaos and the bread of pointlessness. He was the one and only bishop of the church of the random and the ambivalent. In his words, “Whatever happened, happened.” People were drawn together and drawn apart on the whims of the universe, not by the Goddess or anything as fickle as fate or destiny. To him, there was no higher power, only the unsteady, unpredictable flow of cruel chance. <strike></strike>

This is what still makes his death so hard to accept. From the moment the blade pierced his side, there was only grim acceptance on his face. It was his time; the universe had deemed it so. But she couldn’t let go, not now and especially not then.

She had turned back time, again and again and again and again, until the fabric of reality began to unravel like frayed twine and even then she did not stop. She plied the veins of time until colors wavered and the air bled and only when Sothis screamed, “Stop! You’ll end it all!” did she let her hand fall, did she rush to his side, did she tell him she loved him, did she cry. And as his pulse faded beneath her fingertips, he touched her face and extoled her tears. And then he left. And then a month later, Sothis did the same. And then Edelgard plunged the continent into war. And then Garreg Mach fell. And then and then and then and then. There were so many And Thens. And so many, too many, of them had been while Byleth slumbered within a bed of algae and muck.

Two moons ago, she climbed the monastery steps and laid eyes on the man who had loved so desperately he gave himself body and soul to the dead and knew immediately that she slept for far too long. Last moon, she watched the same man, the one who had once wept at the prospect of unjust killing, torture a man until he begged for death, and still did not kill him. Today, he had suggested they were the same breed of monster, only alive when their hands were wet with the lifeblood of the wretched.

War has changed all it has touched, but it has twisted Dimitri into something bleak and wrathful. And he is not wrong in saying they are the same. He has become something unforgiveable; something like her.

In a time that was not too long ago, but seemed like an eternity, he had asked her if killing still unnerved her and she had answered the way her father would have wanted her to, that it did, that it always would. But it wasn’t true. There was a joy in battle and in extinguishing the life of another, no matter how demented. Fodlan may have just gone to war, but Byleth has been at war since she first took the life of another. She had only been nine, but it didn’t matter. Her father was a mercenary and she would be too. And whatever happened, happened.

So maybe that is why the blessing of Sothis can never sit right within her. How can she be holy when spilt blood is sweeter to her than any wine has ever been? How can she be savior to man when killing is as natural to her as breathing? How can she be anointed when the sight of Dimitri torturing another with such violence and raw hate struck her hard and perverted in the base of her belly so that the memory glints like a swimming fish in her mind? How can she be a beacon of faith when her breath catches at his proclamation that they are the same beast, when she finds herself giving ground to the darkness inside just as he has?

And so Byleth prays. She is a monster, but she is trying so damn hard to be anything else.

“Please,” she says aloud to the eternal nothingness. “Please, help me.”

The forlorn whisper of the wind is her only answer. The stars flicker in and out of the rolling clouds overhead. Far off, in the distance, thunder grumbles.

_You’ve given your power to the wrong person, _Byleth wants to shout, but she knows better. Sothis, wherever she may be, could not, or, perhaps, would not, respond. And, even if she did send a sharp, spirited response crackling through Byleth’s skull, it would only be a rebuke.

Sothis found her worthy. Sothis loved her above all else. And Byleth knows she will never understand why.

Overhead, the sky begins to weep. Rain drizzles in from the broken ceiling. It dusts her shoulders and darkens her hair. The chill seeps through her thin nightwear until every inch of her skin is puckered with gooseflesh.

Byleth tilts her head to the sky and catches the droplets on her tongue. The water sours her cheeks with cold. It stings. It thickens the fog in her brain. She stares up into the rain and watches the drops blot out the stars at impossible speed. 

When the cathedral bells signal midnight overhead, her legs have begun to grow numb beneath her and ice has usurped her blood. Shivers radiate along her spine. Rivers of water stream from her hair. Lightning forks the sky, obliterates her thoughts, her fears, the very core of her being. Thunder booms, nearly knocks her over. And then, thunder again, behind her. She is scrambling to stand, but the rain fights against her, weighing her down.

Her hands are fisted and raised when she turns. Brawling is not her specialty, but she will be damned if she goes down without a fight. But no enemy stands with weapon raised before her. It is only Dimitri, glowering from the dark. He is windswept, slightly damp, but otherwise untouched by the storm.

Lightning flashes again and sets his face in fantastical, sorrowful repose. An entire tragic opera could be written about the tense twitching of his jaw alone. He is both an angel fallen from heaven and a demon clawing its way out of hell. He is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. The sight of him would break her heart, if she had one.

“Why are you here?” she asks and she hangs her hands at her sides, but her fingers will not unclench. They are stiff as rigor mortis and prepared to rend flesh. 

He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t expect him too. He only speaks to her when there are others around, no matter how she’s attempted to share his company. Before, in the days of the academy, they would spend entire afternoons holed away in the courtyard, sipping at tea, chamomile for him and bergamot for her, and discussing whatever subject caught their attention.

In fact, they had spent so much time together that Manuela had taken to warning her about the dangers of fraternizing with the students, especially those of noble birth. But Byleth could never stay away from Dimitri for long. Rarely did they speak of the specters that haunted them, but, even in conversations about the weather, she had known that he could understand her without explanation. No one had never even come close before.

Sometimes, she wishes she had been drowned in the river rather than preserved to awaken in a world of wrong. It would be easier that way, for everyone.

Thunder booms. Dust rumbles from the ceiling and catches in the falling rain like flies in amber. The dirty water catches on the ends of her bangs and drips onto her face when it gains too much weight, leaving gritty trails along the contours of her cheeks. 

“What do you want?” she asks.

Again, he gives no response. There is a tremor in the air around him as he shakes where he stands. Felix calls him a boar, but surely a caged canary is a more apt comparison. He moves even when he is motionless. He no longer sings or soars or smiles. He remains trapped by his delusions, even though no bars constrain him, and, still, his death would portend the death of the entire army.

The rain grows cold on Byleth’s skin and droops her head. There is no point in trying to commune with willful silence. She draws her arms around her to ward off the chill and walks for the exit. She is so devoid of hope that he will speak that she falls immediately still when the grumble of his voice reaches her ear.

“Did they speak to you?” he asks, just above the cascading rain. “The ones you pray for?”

“No,” she says. She doesn’t turn to him, only continues in her departure until his voice halts her once more.

“Those long years, when you were gone, I was hoping I would hear your voice above all others.”

Drizzling rain seeps between his every word. His confession suffocates her. She wonders, then, if all those years ago, he had searched for her in the wreckage of the battle. If he had moved heaven and earth to find her, with the hope of laying her to a proper rest. She remembers little of that battle, only her untimely, everlasting fall. Though she tries, she can’t remember where he was when Rhea laid waste to the Imperial army. Had he been at her side, reaching for her as she tumbled through the air? Or had he been deep in enemy lines, set on eliminating Edelgard, no matter the cost?

Now, she turns to him and watches the rain form a fuzzy outline behind him. She says, “The dead have nothing for you.”

He jerks his head to the ground. His mouth works into a scowl. The sky splits in half behind his head with electric fury. 

“You’re wrong. They are all I have left.”

He looks at her, but she knows he is looking through her, to the assortment of the unmerry dead that materialize before his exhaustion-stricken eyes. She wonders if they appear to him as flesh and blood as he remembers them or as blurred shadows and inhuman voices.

“They’re not real,” she says. Her voice is soft, softer than it has perhaps ever been, because she wants him to find truth in it.

What happens next is more mistake than intention, but it is unavoidable.

It happens like this.

Byleth takes a step forward. She isn’t scared of him. She wants to remind him of the differences between the living and the dead. But the rain steals the traction from beneath her boots. She trips, slides. He snags her by the crook of her elbow, squeezes so hard it hurts. She catches her balance. He doesn’t let her go. And she is terrified of the affection soaring in her chest, but she rises anyway. Because she can’t shatter his stare. Because he looks so much like he wants her that she convinces herself that he must.

If it hadn’t been raining that night, then it would have happened another night, in another way. There is no delaying the inevitable. They are the same; they cannot by apart. Whatever happened, happened.

At first, his kiss is stunted and she is certain that he will cast her aside with the back of his hand or a zealous shove. Against the plush of his lips, she imagines herself sprawled on the stone, crimson leaking from her skull and mingling with the dirty rain. Visions of her own demise come easily to her, perhaps because she has seen the almost-deaths of so many others and has stolen them back from the clutches of the reaper. It seems certain that her own death lurks close by, brought on by the vengeful hands of cheated death.

Dimitri leans away, but his face is still so close that she can taste the heat of his breath. He has had something with cinnamon. She wonders who forced it on him. 

"Fool woman,” he says. When he returns her kiss, holding her by the back of her head and crushing his mouth onto hers, she understands entirely what he means. It is easier to give in than to admit the futility of it all.

He is too angry to be considered a good kisser, but she drinks his kisses like heady wine anyway. His hand kneads the base of her skull. The other grips her waist, holds her so firmly in place that she could not leave even if she wanted to. Their heights are so diverse that she has no choice but to keep her hands laid flat against the jut of his chest. The slats between the plates are studded just enough that she can use them to steady herself. She stands on the blades of her feet and clings to him lest she tumble to the floor in an unceremonious heap.

His mouth is hot and wet against hers. His tongue is strong and unrelenting. He presses into her with such intensity that her body bends unnaturally to escape from the pressure of his touch. But she doesn’t retreat. Though they kiss, she cannot imagine what comes next so she will savor it as long as he permits her. It is a real, solid fantasy, but a fantasy all the same.

Her balance wavers as her toes grow weary. His mouth slips from hers as she careens backward, but then she is soaring. His hands dig into the underside of her thighs, through the threadbare pants she has chosen for sleepwear, as he lifts her up. She snakes her legs around his waist, refusing to allow even the air to separate them. The metal of his armor is ice against her wet skin. Her hair sticks to her lips, but he has captured them again before she can spit it out and then they are kissing through a mesh of damp hair and the aftertaste of lavender shampoo.

A chill grips her as he moves, practically running, through the dilapidated sanctity of the cathedral. And then he slams her against the wall.

The tile cracks against her. Pain whooshes through her back and she can only grunt into his mouth. The sky flashes behind the red of her eyelids. It hurts so much that she confuses it for desire. She punctuates her kisses by taking his bottom lip between her teeth. His hands practically claw chunks of flesh from the meat of her thighs. Releasing him, she leans away, fumbles with the soggy hem of her shirt, and then she wriggles from it. 

Dimitri only stares when she holds its waterlogged corpse above her head like a declaration of war. The shadow beneath his eye stands in stark contrast to the pink dusting the rest of his face. With all his cruel bravado and warmongering, it is easy to forget that, in the end, he is only a man.

“Are you—” he says and she says, begs, “I want to. I want you.”

Because she does. It has been so long since she’s been with anyone and never has she felt the way she does now; needed, worshipped, alive.

As her shirt falls to the floor with a sickly thump, his mouth finds her neck and he marks her with teeth and tongue. His gruff hand circles the swell of her breast before chancing a caress of the hardened nipple at its peak. When she moans, she tightens her legs around him, drawing him closer, needing to feel the scrape of his hard, scarred skin against hers. His cloak falls away, but the rest is not so easily done away with.

“Why are you always wearing this damn armor?” she hisses as her fingers fumble and catch on laced straps. A huff pitched in his voice sounds and it is not quite a laugh, but it’s the closest thing she’s heard since that night in the Holy Tomb, so long ago. Holding her in place with his body, he stretches his arms behind his back. There is the sound of violent ripping as he tears through the leather straps. Then, he stands bare-chested before her.

She catches her breath, runs her fingers over the hard planes of his chest. Fresh scars catch on her calloused hands. His heart beats emphatically beneath her fingertips.

“You’re beautiful,” she says. She burrows her fingers in the mop of his blonde hair. It is greasy and tangled, but downy soft beneath the grimy slickness.

He pitches his eyes to the motions of his hand. He says nothing.

Lightning flashes. Thunder roars.

She looks behind him to the rain coursing off the jagged pile of rubble and wonders if they should continue elsewhere. The storm might have aroused the concerns of Seteth. The man could come barging in at any second to examine the damage of the open ceiling and she can think of nothing worse than the lecture she would surely receive upon him bearing witness to her current situation.

But Dimitri captures her attention with the cautious descent of his hand over her belly and into the plunge of her waistband.

Caught between the solid wall and the dense, unwavering muscle of Dimitri’s body, Byleth can do nothing but fidget against the resolute stone. Rain oozes off her heavy hair and replaces the taste of him on her tongue. The notion of holier-than-thou Seteth coming upon them now, with no reasonable explanation beyond the truth, only heightens the sensation. Her sense of self narrows to the point of contact between Dimitri’s hand and her flesh and every inch of her is hurtling towards a breaking point, brought on by rough fingers. When the thunder rakes her body, she draws her nails down his back in wide swaths and presses her mouth against his shoulder to keep from rousing the stone saints in the next room with a rapturous moan.

As the pleasure fades and her skin is cold and goosefleshed once more, she twists until he releases her. She drops to her knees. The hard floor sends a jolt up through her teeth and into her eyes, but she doesn’t falter. Intentions of returning the favor have taken root and nothing but his refusal could halt her charging approach. She takes hold of the front of his breeches, nearly at eye-level given her short stature, jerks them, tries to locate the method to unfasten them, but fails. His hand grabs a fistful of hair, yanks her eyes up to his, and then he is toppling her onto his discarded cloak and kneeling over top of her. If he fell onto her fully, he would surely smother her from his sheer, broad mass. 

The rain has saturated the cloak and the fur is matted and sticky against her naked back. He takes her head between his hands. A glint like the flash of a knife flickers in his eye and, enraptured by the mystery within that single, azure iris, Byleth fears he will turn his wrists and snap her neck.

But he doesn’t. Of course. He doesn’t.

His thumbs touch the corners of her mouth. She turns to one, draws it between her lips, savors the rough fingerprint against her tongue, demonstrates exactly what sensations he has denied himself.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because you’re here,” she says because it is easier than giving voice to the bubbling, uncertainty stifling her breath.

It isn’t the answer he wants, she can see that in the sudden, dour quirk of his lips, but she doesn’t think he expects anything else. Like he said, they are alike; two broken people woven of the same monstrous fabric. Love is not something she will even consider because it aches in a way that keeps her up late at night and ruins her appetite and mangles everything she holds true about herself. Besides, she does not even have a heart to give away.

Dimitri fumbles in undoing his breeches. She offers assistance, sliding her fingers along the center of his chest to the jut of his waistband, but he bats her hand away. His brow furrows in exasperation and she crumbles beneath the weight of just exactly he is sacrificing to her.

“Dimitri,” she says and she pushes against his chest, “If you’ve never done this, then maybe—”

But he hushes her with a hand over her mouth. She speaks against it, but her words go muffled and ignored. Finally, he strips free of his breeches and undergarments and relieves her of hers, yanking them down so that they pool at her ankles. Taking his strong jaw between her hands, she grabs his face and holds him still. She makes him look at her. More than anything, she wants him, but not at the cost of his innocence, not without his full commitment.

“Dimitri—” 

“Please,” he says. His voice is weak in the middle, grating around the release of the word and sinking into the pour of the rain, but he doesn’t shy from her gaze. He sets his hands on either side of her head. His skin is like moonlight.

When he lowers his body so that the bleeding warmth of his cock grazes her bare thighs, she asks, “Are you sure?”

Never taking his eye from hers, he bestows a kiss on the heel of each of her hands. So soft. So unlike the beast he claims himself to be. He says, “Yes.”

Byleth keeps a hand on his face and lowers the other to guide him into her. And he is maddeningly slow in taking her, easing in with a gentleness that is antithetical to his cultivated feral behavior. Cautious best describes his progress as he watches her face with smoldering intensity. At the hint of a wince, he slows and waits for her nod.

Though she fails, she does her best to squelch her visible discomfort at his size. Pain is her ultimate desire; pain so intense that it drives her away. She wants to find a realization of chastity so that she can be as she assumes she must be, holy and pure.

Though he is clumsy, rough, and unsure of himself, he finds rhythm soon enough. And it doesn’t hurt at all. In fact, it is the opposite of hurt, full and warm and electric. It is something like love.

Dimitri begins to quicken his pace and Byleth is eager to match it, but soon she is breathing his name instead of air and drowning in the strong, solid feel of him. He buries his face in her neck, boils her blood with his molten, panting breath and desperate lovemaking.

When it is over and he is spent, she counts the seconds by the thrum of his heart. She kisses his face and traces sweet nothings across the jagged scars on his back. Despite everything, she wants to remain ensnared by him forever. To the sound of the slowing storm, she dreams of early morning birdsongs and late-night whispers.

And then, at the peak of her wistful dreaming, he leaves. Not all at once or right away, but he does leave. He stands, gathers up the remnants of his armor, and then he is gone. Without a word. Without a backward glance.

When Byleth finally stands, it is as a figment of who she used to be. The wind breaks against her skin, blisters across the dampness. She adjusts her pants, hiking the waistband over the handprints swollen like fresh tattoos over her hips, and retrieves her drenched shirt, forcing her way into its waterlogged caress. His cloak, sporting new stains to complement old blood, she picks up and wraps around her forearms. Before setting out, she is sure to obscure the sigil of the royal family against her belly. 

As she leaves, the stretching pews of the cathedral spotted dark from the rain seem like the leering maw of a hellish beast, hungry for the chew of her sinful sinew. If it lunged for her, it would surely have her. She is too sore from Dimitri’s embrace and too drained of self-preservation to flee. It would be a fitting punishment for her idiocy. She is all the more a fool for thinking prayer could banish the depravity from her soul. Prayer belongs to the faithful, not the faithless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I guess this is my life now; succumbing to the rabid ideas that entire my brain and going absolutely stir-crazy until I get them out. This is my first public attempt at smut so that's quite an adventure. It's super angsty of course because, well, it's me and I go buckwild for that stuff. This is basically what I wanted to happen in a chapter of my OTHER dimileth fic (I'm cultivating them like tomatoes now I stg), but simply didn't fit and didn't work as narrated by Dimitri. So here's Byleth getting her chance to experience Sad Boi Hours.  
I've found it really interesting that Byleth is usually portrayed as this subtle savior to Dimitri, and I think he very much does view her as such, but she's got a lot of shit to wade through too. Like she has a heart but it doesn't beat? She doesn't really have any clue how old she is or what the hell the deal was with her father? Sothis granted her with the power of a god and then peaces out? Rhea has clearly fucked around with her in some way, but nobody's willing to tell her how??? Like all poor Byleth wanted to do was fish with her dad and maybe school some kids at swordplay, but now she's got a murdered dad and clinical depression.  
But I digress. I just really got the urge to write some sad, stormy smut and this is what happened. I also really love the idea of both Byleht & Dimitri thinking they're worse than the other and trying to convince the other of their worth. Dimitri doesn't really do that like at all in canon, but I just think it'd be neat.  
Anywho, I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it! It's down been one of my favorite things to ever write and I hope I didn't butcher something that was really great in my head!!!!! Please leave a comment or share your thoughts! I love hearing what you all have to say more than writing sometimes lol!! <3


	2. Squall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I changed the name because I'm really upset that I didn't think of "The Rains of Fodlan" when I first posted this. "Forces of Nature" is a dumb title in comparison. Sorry for any confusion! :x

Manuela sings as she drops stinking herbs into boiling water. Her voice is soothing, like the buzz of bees over spring flowers. Byleth closes her eyes, sinks back into the plush cushion of the armchair, and welcomes Manuela’s hum into the cavity of her skull to flush out the ache in her bones. It has been only a few moments since she has awoken to the world and every inch of her, from her toes to her soul, throbs. It was muscle memory that led her to the former singer’s room, a dry need for the herbal hangover remedy only Manuela can conjure.

“You’ve caused quite the stir,” Manuela says. She adds a handful of powdered bark to the bubbling froth. A puff of steam billows from the little pot. The room fills with the cloying stink of tree sap. Byleth’s mouth waters as her head pounds.

“Forcing one of your former students, _Sylvain _of all people, to carry you back,” Manuela says and then she laughs a bitter little laugh. “Even I’ve never done that.”

Beyond gossamer curtains, the sky is sleet gray from roiling clouds. It had smelled like rain on her way over, but Byleth is doubtful. It has not rained since that night, over a month past now. The land is parched and the crops are dying and their situation is grim. The Empire marches on the Alliance and Dimitri is dead set on intercepting them. They are certain to take insurmountable losses.

But no one listens to her, Dimitri least of all.

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” Manuela asks. She stops stirring, taps the spoon against the lip of the pot. Byleth nurses sore knuckles against her mouth. A blank stare is all Manuela receives.

In truth, Byleth has nothing to say; she remembers little of the night before. There was the sting of strong liquor, flashes of glittering laughter, hot kisses pressed to the flat of her hand, the crackling snap of broken glass, blood running between her knuckles, strong arms holding her tight, the upside-down moon, and a dirt path falling into the sky. What can she say when all she knows for certain is that she was too drunk to remember any of it?

Manuela pours the steaming liquid into a faded teacup and breathes a small incantation over it. When she hands it to Byleth, the drink is cool.

“Your father had a nasty penchant for whiskey too,” Manuela says. She returns to the counter, swipes it over once with a stark white cloth. “Though he never let himself come to such disgrace.”

Byleth wants to say, _You’re one to talk_ and _Don’t you dare speak of my father _and _What do you know? _and _Leave me be. _But Manuela has always been kind, even if she is too nosy for her own good and Byleth can’t bring herself to dismiss the woman outright. So, she remains silent and slowly drains her drink.

The drink is thick and heady. Already, the ache of her hangover is beginning to eb. Manuela always makes her remedies stronger than anyone else would dare to; it is why Byleth always finds herself in the older woman’s room the morning after a night spent in the tavern. And, in the lull between campaigns and battles, Byleth spends most of her nights in the local tavern.

Outside, the sun has been smothered by black, swollen clouds. It begins to rain. The rain hits the window in slow, syrupy waves. The glistening wave has the feeling of a ship at sea.

“So, who did this?” Manuela asks. She falls into the opposite chair with the grace of an off-balance ox. Byleth stares, rubs at her wrist. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Manuela says. “I’m not an idiot, no matter what Hanneman may tell you.”

The poor attempt at a joke doesn’t draw a laugh from either of them. It just falls flat in the already still air.

Byleth stares into the whorls of steam rising from her cup. Even with the ambiguity in Manuela’s question, she pictures herself, pinned against the cathedral wall, stone cracked behind her back, bared to the shimmering starlight, moaning as teeth grazed her neck. The next morning, Seteth had poked around about the cause of the damage. She had said nothing then and she says nothing to Manuela now. But Manuela continues to dig.

“A month ago, you come to me in the middle of the night, soaking wet and red-eyed, tell me you need emergency contraceptive—”

And Byleth can taste the stinging nettles that scalded her throat so much it surprised her and the hot warmth of her eyes as Manuela cooed, “This is so unlike you.”

That month spent waiting for the proof that Manuela’s concoction had done its work was nothing short of hell. Nothing could be worse than an unplanned pregnancy during wartime from a man that could never love her. And she is all the more a fool for taking the risk between her legs. Never has she been so carefree in her rendezvouses. Never.

“—and then the next thing I know you’re inviting strangers to share your bed and spending your nights courting whiskey?”

Byleth digs the sharp of her fingers deep into the meat of her palm. It stings, but not as miserably as the sensation in her chest. Shame, regret, want, embarrassment, all lie coiled together there, in the hollow of her heart. It is all so pathetic that she nearly laughs, but the sound would come out all wrong. And Manuela would probably drag her to the infirmary.

“So, what happened that night? Who did this to you?”

What would Manuela even say if she told her? If she thought being _carried _by a former student was scandalous, then she would be absolutely distraught over the truth of that night.

It doesn’t even matter what happened that night because it will never happen again. That one act of selfishness proved once and for all that she is no divine being, Sothis blessed or not. No holy being would ever commit such careless harm.

And Manuela would never understand. Her concern runs deeper than their friendship. Byleth knows her incarnation as Sothis will always be of the utmost importance to all those around her. Sometimes, she wishes she had never cleaved her way out of the void. If she had stayed, then Sothis would still be around. The loneliness in her head hurts worse than any of her hangovers ever have. 

“Byleth, if something happened to you that night, if someone… hurt you, then you need to tell me so I can go club their brains in.”

Wind rattles the glass windowpanes and, though she feels no chill, Byleth shivers. She says, “No. It wasn’t like that.”

It was like foolish longing, like finding the confidence to scream, like reaching out for comfort in the middle of a hurricane, like coming back together only to fall apart again.

“It was wanted,” Byleth mutters. Manuela feathers a hand through her hair and says, “Ah, well that is a relief. But then—”

“It was a mistake,” Byleth says. Her hands clench the teacup so tight it threatens to leap from her grasp. Reflected in the dark remains of her drink, her face is round and distended. When she blinks, her eyes bulge and wobble. She gulps the remaining dregs down and says, “And I wish it hadn’t happened.”

Manuela hums and raises her brows. She raps her long nails against her armrest and says, “Ah, so that’s it then.”

Byleth doesn’t push for an explanation, but Manuela offers one anyway.

“Young love is a fickle thing.”

Byleth scowls because that’s not it, not entirely. It is everything else, the bright, burning everything that surrounds the emptiness left inside.

Yesterday, there had been a woman, a mother, surely, given the two young children at her side. When Byleth had tried to drag her from the battlefield, the woman had attempted to stab Byleth through the leg. And Byleth had slaughtered her out of instinct. Pure, cold instinct. The children, two chocolate haired girls with strong noses, wailed and wailed, their faces spattered with their mother’s lifeblood.

The girls were in the infirmary now, still catatonic last she’d heard. They were pretty things. She told herself their sweet faces would melt the right person’s heart. She told herself that they had each other and that was something. She told herself that it was all her fault.

When she was a mercenary, she had seen untold horror after untold horror, but she had always taken solace in her father’s discretion. He would never take a contract if he distrusted the employers or suspected their reasons. With Jeralt, killing was not as simple as sticking a blade in deep enough; killing was a matter of morality and sensibility. Jeralt never killed a man that did not deserve it. Sometimes, he let bandits and vagabonds go. And if they had proved to be unworthy of life after all, then only the Goddess could have helped them once Jeralt hunted them down.

Byleth had killed mothers before, but only in the heat of battle. Never had she killed an innocent. Never had she stolen the life of someone while their children watched in terror.

Would the girls grow up to crave revenge? Would they come after her? Would they be strong enough to kill her? 

Because she has learned the truth, more or less, about her true nature from notes stolen from Rhea's room. No mortal hand can end her, not while the Goddess’ heart resides within her own. She is the unkillable thing of nightmares, through and through.

Manuela calls her name with displeasure. When Byleth focuses on her, casting aside the lurking demons of her thoughts, Manuela softens. She clasps her hands over her lap and asks, “May I guess who it is?”

Though the rain still crashes outside, Byleth stands. Manuela’s remedy has done its work and she has no interest in any sort of asinine guessing game.

“It’s no one,” Byleth says. She hands the empty teacup to Manuela. The older woman glares and snatches it away. “Thank you for the drink.”

“You’re no fun,” Manuela huffs.

It is a short distance to the door and Byleth yanks it open before Manuela can complain more. From the ajar door, angry voices swell. Overtop of them, Manuela shouts, “Stay away far from the tavern tonight! I can’t be worrying about you having a hangover during—"

Manuela’s nagging falls silent when Byleth shuts the door, as do the bickering voices. In the silence, Byleth sighs and sweeps her bangs back from her forehead, only for them to swing back into place the moment she drops her hand. If she was alone in the hallway, she might have leaned back against the door and slid down it until the floor knocked some sense back into her.

But she isn’t alone.

Gilbert stands at the end of the hall, a scowl on his face and a hand pulling the hair back from his scalp in exasperation. Dimitri stands across from him, arms crossed over his chest and moody anger souring his face. They both look to her for a moment, Gilbert in disinterest, Dimitri in disdain, and then they turn back to their argument.

Though she has no solid reason, Byleth blushes and then she flees down the long corridor until their voices fade into the stone around her. 

A month ago, she might have inserted herself between them, might have tried her hand at reasoning with Dimitri, but not now. She has scarcely spoken to Dimitri since that night. A few comments on the campaign, a command shouted across the battlefield, a curt dismissal here and there, but nothing of substance. If she expected anything to come of it, she would have asked him if it had helped, in any way, to dull the voices in his head because, for her, in that moment, she had felt like there was nothing in the world that could hurt her, so long as she was with him. 

But she doesn't ask him, because he won't even glance her way. She has long since learned to live with his hate, but she never expected it would be directed towards her. 

Despite Manuela’s warnings, Byleth braces the storm and trudges through the mud to the tavern. She takes whiskey like communion, drinking it straight like her father once did, until everything hurts just a little less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've come to the realization that this fic is entirely self indulgent because it's got everything I like: storms, commentaries on religion, herbal remedies, Manuela, angsty pining, overdrawn ruminations, and just a dash of forbidden love/romance. I get really jazzed writing this piece for some reason, but hey! It's almost over lol. Can't believe my first ever finished fic is gonna be a softcore porn. So it goes I suppose!  
I hope y'all enjoy! Leave a comment if you feel so inclined! <3<3


	3. Drizzle

The tavern is mostly empty, except for the regulars. There’s Old Allen, with his missing hand and dead wife, and Patricia, second-born daughter to a family of filth. Poor Tom and his wild ramblings are absent. Byleth hopes he hasn’t gotten himself killed, but she wouldn’t be surprised. It is easy for those on the fringes to disappear into the ether without a whisper of concern on their behalf.

She wonders if it would be the same for her or if her incarnation as Sothis would embellish her memory. The latter holds the truth of her future, but, for now, in this moment alone, she pretends otherwise. She drinks her whiskey slow, holding it in the cavern of her mouth before letting it blaze down her throat.

Tomorrow, the Kingdom army will begin the march on Gronder. Total annihilation is a near certainty with their forces so small and their king-to-be listening to no one but the ghosts of his past. But tonight, is not tomorrow. Tonight is still young and strong.

Tonight is her birthday.

Her birthday is only an arbitrary day plucked from the calendar and assigned hers by her father. Of course, she’d only learned this later when he’d been drunk, but it hadn’t changed anything. They never celebrated her birth, only acknowledged it as a thing that was.

But it was hers and that mattered now, even if she didn’t understand why.

At Garreg Mach, birthdays had been of great importance and hers had been celebrated, just like all the others. It was the first and only time her birthday had been given any great attention. Today, some of the former students of her house had taken notice again, banding together to write her a letter of admiration and giving her a small token of appreciation in the form of a handful of exotic teas, a rarity in the wartime. It was a nice gesture, nicer than she deserved, but it struck her cold and empty when, long ago, a boy with soft eyes had given her something of the same with kinder words, dripping with possibility.

But five years had passed since then and that boy had grown all twisted and rotted and nothing could ever be as it once was.

Around Byleth, the tavern swells with bodies as the night grows late. While they twitter and laugh, she stares into the dark amber of her glass. She has only had a sip. So utterly unlike her. She brings the glass to her forehead, rolls the smooth outer shell of it against the pulsating ache. It is a motion that has become her signature, stolen from a lady of the night she had seen once, long ago, in childhood. When the bartender notices, he tops off her drink in front of her and does not ask for payment. He is a kind man; Byleth wonders how many more nights it will take him to proposition her.

The air around her is smoky. It smells of booze and sex and fire. Once, the musky scent of a tavern had seemed to promise adventure and excitement. Now, it only promises loneliness and falsehoods. She folds herself overtop her arms and stares into the flashes of flesh that catch and glisten in the bottles lining the back of the bar. Sometimes, the glint of a brown eye tricks her into remembering a childhood spent playing cards with bartenders and stealing gulps of drinks when no one was looking. There is a sour taste like sweat in her mouth.

She had never questioned her father’s drinking. It was just something that he did. And he was never mean or rude or belligerent. He would get loud and make jokes that didn’t make any sense, but he never really changed with the drink, just became more himself.

But she remembers the way he had looked at her when he held a beer in hand and how the soft crinkling around his eyes turned flat and hard.

In the black of her mind, she holds the truth she can hardly bear to acknowledge; he had drunk because of her, because of her emptiness and her inhumanity. Throughout her childhood, she had been a hollow shell of a human, feeling nothing and seeing everything, and, always, he had quested after a love she could never give. In the end, he had been thrilled to see her cry, even if it foretold his death.

When the room stills and softens, Byleth hardly notices. She is too busy imagining the warm shape of her father beside her and putting words of condemnation in his mouth. He would hate this pathetic, slump of a person she has become if he still breathed and maybe, then, it is a blessing that he does not.

As footsteps stop behind her, she braces for the flirtation, the pursual, the proposal, expecting another knight or low-tier noble or even Sylvain, who presses his luck every once in a while, to voice their desire. Normally, she goes with them easily, thrilling in the physical desecration, but tonight, she is in no mood for a body to warm her bed; she only wants to be alone.

“Get up.”

She stiffens, shocked by the brusque authority. It is not the first time someone has been sent to collect her, but others often pursue avenues of gentle concern and soft suggestions. But not him. Gentleness and softness are the antithesis of what he has let himself become.

Though she knows it will only enrage him, she curls in on herself, snaking her arms over each other and lying the heft of her upper body flat against the bar. If she could sink into the wood and become another dark grain on its surface, she would.

Slick coils of fury, humiliation, rebellion, and misery loop round and round in her stomach, sliding under and over one another until all she feels is sick.

There is a low murmur that builds from the back of the tavern. He isn’t meant to be here; this place is not for him.

“Why are you here?” she asks. The words come out muffled and damp from the slump of her arms. She uses her nails to dig trenches in her forearms. She wonders, vaguely, if the sting will be enough to bruise.

“We march on Gronder tomorrow.”

The rest he leaves unsaid, but she can hear it anyway, a muffle of voices: his, Manuela’s, Seteth’s, Rhea’s, her father’s, Sothis’.

_You will ruin everything. Damn drunk. Shameless slut. _

“Get up,” he says, the way she has heard him speaking to the bandits and Imperials and wastrels he takes pleasure in slaughtering. And she hates him for it. For treating her this way. For coming into this place that is her only escape from him.

So, she makes herself sit up. Makes herself hard and jagged and spiteful. Makes herself look at him. And he looks awful, even more so than usual.

The skin beneath his eye is dark and puffy and his face has lost all semblance of former beauty. He seems a reanimated corpse, thin and haggard about the face, but bulky and heavy with vengeful strength everywhere else.

She knows he hasn’t been eating or sleeping, but she’s long since thought of tending to him. She’d tried only once after their night in the cathedral, after the fifth time Manuela had chewed her out for her behavior. And he had snarled a command to leave him, practically snapped his teeth at her when she’d resisted, snarling back and wanting to tear him apart beneath her nubbed fingernails. Only when Dedue, back from the dead, had intervened had she backed down and realized how foolish she’d been in thinking she, of all people, could get through to him.

That night, she’d shattered the arm of a man who had attempted to steal away one of the barmaids without asking and the harsh violence had made her feel alive in a way she had not been in so long. She has gone too long without bloodshed.

“Do not spit commands at me.”

His eye squints into a glare and she wants him to drag out of the chair by the roots of her hair, to lay his hands on her so that she can never forget the sting, to rend her flesh beyond recognition so she could finally stop seeing her reflection in iterations of the Goddess. But, more than anything, she wants him to leave her alone.

Turning back to the bar, she takes the rest of her whiskey in a single, quick gulp. It blazes down her throat and drips like candlewax into her stomach. She holds up her hand for another until the bartender begins to fill her glass with his pink, fat tongue poking between his lips and his wide, wet eyes looking everywhere but at the shadow looming just behind her.

When a hand encased in metal black as the night reaches past her face to grip the bottle, Byleth hears the crack before it sounds, feels the whiskey before it splashes. Glittering bits of glass mist the counter as whiskey splatters in every direction. A woman shrieks. The bartender flees. Byleth scowls. She fishes a leather pouch from her pockets and sets it on the counter over the spreading slick. Inside, lifted from the clothes of dead thieves, is more than enough to cover her drink and the wasted bottle, but not enough to sate the turmoil of Dimitri’s small act of aggression. The tavern erupts into shouting and shoving.

Knowing better than to stay, Byleth leaves, walking from the tavern with her head high and Dimitri following like a distorted echo. The tavern spins into silence in their wake.

Outside, the night sky is heavy with rushing clouds. The moon’s watchful eye just barely lights her path. She makes her way in silence, not daring to acknowledge his presence. She would not know what to say to him even she did. His footsteps thunder behind her on the hard path. The monastery looms into sight just as a light drizzle begins.

“Greetings professor!”

She nods to the gatekeeper but does not stop for small talk. She thinks of the bottle of whiskey she keeps stashed behind her bed and entertains the notion of nursing from it out of simple spite and then she is angry for allowing herself to be bullied. Fiercer men than Dimitri had tried and failed to order her about in the past. So, why does she let herself be jostled about by him?

As she rounds the corner to her room, she imagines the jeer of Sothis’ voice, but fails to give words to the ambient noise. There are a thousand different things the little nuisance might have said, but Byleth cannot conjure a single one. She has spent too long alone with only her own thoughts.

The rain picks up overhead, crashing to the earth in full, heavy waves. It soaks her thoroughly before she can duck into safety beneath the awning over her door. Her hair clings to the curve of her face and she sweeps it overtop her head so that it slaps against her back.

Wet hands make for a difficult time fishing out her key from her pockets and unlocking the door, but she manages. When she turns to order him away, she finds Dimitri looking like a waterlogged rat. Briefly, she debates inviting him in to dry off but knows he will only reject her.

Without a word, she steps through the doorway into the yawning dark of her bedroom. She makes to close the door, but his hand catches on the edge, wrenching it from her grasp. He steps inside, closing the door behind him and crowding her so close she can smell the acidic bite of his dirty armor and feel the hot whisper of his breath.

All the heat of her insides shoots straight along her spine, rocketing up into her mouth and expelling in a single breath of bleating, foolish, _pleasant _surprise. She asks, “Spending the night?”

He scowls and the expression is wholly unbecoming when accompanied by the sheen of wet covering his face. Burgeoning hope seeps from the soles of her feet and down into the floor. She rubs at her face, shrinking in on herself.

“You cannot be trusted,” he says. “And you are of no use to me dead.”

Of course. Only useful as a soldier, a sword, a body. The remark does not wound her, only exhausts. All her energy and spite drains through the curve of her spine as her posture slinks.

“Get out.”

He doesn’t move or answer. He crosses his arms and glowers in the dark as rain assails the windows. Her face warms, but not simply from his disdain. Too many times she has painted him in her mind’s eye in the same position, especially when her mind is so apt to wander when at the whims of an inept lover. Her emotions and wants slosh so suddenly from one extreme to the other, she feels queasy in a way that is definitively wrong.

She could scream and bring the entire wrath of the army upon him, but what would that solve? No matter her difficulties towards him, she does want him to have the solace of human connection, even if it is not with her.

“Please.”

Still, he remains motionless, only glaring. He says again, “You cannot be trusted.”

There is a laugh bubbling in the back of her throat, but she swallows it. If she, who has laid her neck upon the block of ridicule and scorn for him too many times to count, cannot be trusted, then, truly, no one could.

“What does it matter?”

The shifting white of his eye reveals the slanted blue before he jerks his chin to glare at the floor. In some ways, he is like an overgrown, tempestuous child, prone to fits and tantrums of lethal proportions. And, no—

The analogy does not track. _Sothis _was an overgrown child. Dimitri is something else entirely. Like an abused wolf set loose on an unsuspecting populace.

So, it is no surprise when Dimitri’s words come as a low snarl.

“I can have no distractions when I take Edelgard’s head.” 

The growl of his voice fades and Byleth simmers, lets the implications bloom like hunger in the heat of her mouth. Often, she has caught him glaring when in close vicinity, but she had taken it for unbridled disgust. His words too, shorter and angrier than ever before, she had taken for the same, but maybe she had been wrong. Emotions had never been her area of expertise.

She tilts her head. Her wet hair swings like a distended tentacle against the nape of her neck.

“Am I a distraction?”

He does not answer with words, but his hands clench and unclench, open and closed and open and closed in the dim. For a moment, she watches him and the way he stirs the air around him. Then, she flicks her gaze over him, slow and resolute, searching for some tell, something of absolute certainty before she can approach. Because she wants him. But only if he wants her.

And it is the heavy puff of his breath and the darkening of his cheeks, visible even in the watery nighttime, that she latches onto and, from there, it is an easy thing to slip free of her soaked breeches and let them heap on the floor. The residual damp of her skin chills in the drafty room, but the boldness of her motions warms her. Though not a novice by any means, seduction always makes her skin blister into shivers.

“What are you…”

His voice subsides beneath the raging storm as she hooks her hands beneath the wet weight of her shirt and casts it over her head. He stares. Openly, unabashedly. And still his fists open and close, open and close. She cannot make herself smile. She catches sight of her waxen figure in the mirror. A monster stares back. 

“You seem surprised,” she says.

He says nothing, jerks his gaze away from her again, glowers at the floor.

She moves to him, the pads of her feet sticking slightly to the cold wood, and he stumbles from her until his back collides with the solid frame of the door.

“Was this not your intention in coming here?”

She is emotionless, expressionless, the Ashen Demon, once more. Not in battle or in private, when she needs it the most, but here, now, bared before him.

And, more than anything, she needs to be loved by him.

He does not answer, only stares at her from the corner of his eye. She rises onto her toes, presses quick little kisses to the jut of his cheek, his nose, his chin, his neck. His skin is still slick with rainwater and she drinks of the wild wet between kisses. At the junction of his neck, she plies at the pulse beneath his skin with teeth and tongue. She touches his arms, imagines the tension running like a current beneath the plating, smooths her hands over his chest. At last, she deprives herself of the taste of him and brings her lips to the shell of his ear. Her balance wavers and she leans heavily against him, almost falling and pinning him to the door.

_Do you think of that night? _she wants to ask, but knows better, saying instead, “Tell me to stop. I will.”

He rasps a breath through his teeth, half-gasp, half-grunt. She rocks back onto her feet to look at him, but he still will not meet her eye. Still, she can see there is shame and something else. Something darker. He drops his chin to the floor. He mutters, “Do what you must.”

And he is grabbing her about the shoulders and wrenching her up to him with a grip that freezes her bare skin. His kiss is fast and slipping. His teeth clack against hers and it hurts, but she doesn’t draw away and neither does he. When she dares a cursory swipe of her tongue, she finds that he tastes like nothing at all.

Her body hums. Her lungs blaze. She tangles herself in him, fingers in his hair, legs around his waist, until his heartbeat thunders throughout her entire being. He snares her lip between his teeth. She wonders if she tastes like whiskey.

From there, it is a stumbling-staggering path to the bed. She falls into it heavily, attempting to drag him down over top of her, but he resists. She watches as he slowly removes his armor, piece by piece. Each latch is an opportunity for her to stop this, to banish him and all this nonsense from her, but she cannot. Her mouth is dry watching him and his ghostly reflection undress in the rain-streaked window. Even malnourished and brutally scarred, she can think of no more beautiful man.

When he scrambles over her, she can feel intimately the places, too many of them, where his body is thinned and weak. If not for his crest, she wonders if he would even be capable of walking, of embracing her in this way. He does not touch her the way he had in the cathedral. His movements are stiff and disjointed. He is silent, only releasing harsh little puffs of air at the start of each new ministration.

She kisses his neck and massages the places of him he permits her to touch, which are few, but, eventually, she slows, drawing from him to ask, “Do you want this?”

He nods curtly, not looking at her.

“Liar,” she says.

His hands fist around her comforter and then they are on her, far too sharp and heavy to be pleasurable. But she takes it, takes anything he is willing to give.

"Do not tell me what I want," he says, but there is little malice in his voice, only an effort to remain unquestioned.

Long, cold fingers make a path of hard touch from her collarbone to the swell of her breast. He kneads, squeezes, rolls his thumb over the sensitive peak. She lets her head fall back and exhales through gritted teeth. All of her is aflame, radiating out from the prickle of his touch.

“Do not speak,” he says. But it is not cruel. It is not like him at all. Especially when he presses his lips to the arch of her eyebrow. And she nods, breathless. She will not speak. Anything for him. Everything for him.

He does not take anything more of her than she has already given, but the tender passion disappears. He touches her, pleases her, but even his fingers are mechanical when they pump inside her. She ignores the crying fissure inside of her that begs her to hold him still, to make him talk, to unweave the gnarled threads of what they had become. She begs him to fuck her. Begs him until he does. He does not last long. She does not expect him to. But she hopes for a second time, maybe a third.

For a moment, he buries his face in her neck and his breaths are so ragged, she worries he might be crying. But no moisture falls on her skin. She rubs his back, hums a hymn low in the back of her throat, shuffles the akimbo blankets over them both.

But he stirs. And he stretches free of her. And he dresses, quickly, haphazardly, and he leaves.

Dimitri leaves, but Byleth is selfish. She rewinds time, says something different. Tries again. But he leaves. And he leaves. And he leaves. Always, indisputably, he leaves. Even when she begs him not to leave her. Especially then.

The final time, she breaks, says the thing she’s never wanted to say to anyone, least of all him. But she breaks. And she says it. And he is solemn as a graveyard angel. But there is still a savageness about him that only blood can sate. And she would bleed out to make him whole again, but her blood is inconsequential. He already has it. He thirsts for another’s.

When he leaves the final time, after she tells him in monotone that she loves him, and she is completely alone, she fishes the bottle of whiskey from between her bed and her wall and she flings it at the closed door.

It explodes and it soaks the door and the floor, but it is a bland thing. No thunderous explosion rocks the foundations. No errant shard pierces her heart. No fire blazes from the spilled liquor. Nothing.

Nobody comes to investigate the commotion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. It's been a little bit, but. Here it is lol. I needed a wee bit more angst out of this before I sealed it off in a happier ending lol. Planning to have the fourth & final chapter up before the new year so fingers crossed!
> 
> I was so excited to post this that I didn't do my usual extensive editing so I apologize in advance for any mishaps, but this is really just my guilty pleasure rn so I'll have to fix it when I'm not in such a headspace lol. 
> 
> As always, let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy! <3<3


	4. Mist

In Derdriu, after the city’s liberation and surrounded by the former Golden Deer house and a king freshly emancipated from his own insanity, Claude asks of Byleth, “You doing okay, Teach?”

Her head pangs and her knee smarts and her thoughts are a slur of stunted adrenaline, but it is an easy thing to steel her voice to the point of scarcity and say, “Battle weary.”

“Aren’t we all?” Claude responds with a laugh.

“Perhaps,” Lorenz says, “if you had elected for another method of defense—"

“Oh hush, Lorenz,’” Hilda says with a lazy drawl. “We all know you would’ve done it differently without you having to tell us.”

Lorenz flounders in indignation, but Hilda only huffs, skimming her finger along the sharp of her ax in nonchalance. The glint of blood-spattered polish across the spade of her nail catches Byleth’s eye as it continues in its slick back and forth. Claude’s jovial attempt at peacekeeping is drowned to her ears. There is only Hilda’s bored tick, millimeters away from splitting the well-manicured appendage.

As Byleth stares, there is ringing like birdsong in her ears and churning like sugar in her stomach. Hilda’s finger, like a pink pendulum blade, undulates, riding the killing edge like a boat at sea. Beside her, Marianne is tending to Dimitri, to a cut that had bloomed from his forehead. Dimitri says something, too low for Byleth to understand, and Marianne, with her hand hovering above his brow, smiles at him through the light that radiates from her palm.

Byleth ignores them. Ignores the little sweetness of laugh. Ignores the little loosing of breath. Ignores the little vulture eating at the fat of her unbeating heart that has grown stronger and stronger since that night after Gronder.

It had been raining that night and she had taken it to be a sign of something. Forgiveness maybe. Or rebirth. She knows better now.

That night, the downpour had stripped Dimitri of his fangs and venom. The rain anointed his hair, his skin. She took him into her room, cared for him, comforted him. She remembers the moment that followed, drawn long and gooey in the space between fantasy and reality, in times when she should know better. Times like now.

That night, rendered in flickering candlelight, she drew his head against her chest. His unkempt hair spilled over her, smelling like blood and battle and death. If he noticed her lacking heartbeat, he didn’t say anything. She hummed a song Manuela often sang as she smoothed her fingers through his wet hair. He sighed and his breath was hot and dense. 

Her fingers boldened and she pulled them from his hair and drew them across the hard angles of his face. There was no hidden desire to her touch, avoiding his mouth entirely, only to relax him into restful slumber. But he refused to quiet. His eye stared out into the dark, surely making unknown horrors out of the shadows.

“How can you stomach it? After all I’ve done to you?”

His voice rumbled like distant thunder against her chest. She traced letters into the slate of his cheek.

“You weren’t yourself,” she said. “It was a sickness.”

They do not speak of that night, just as they do not speak of the times they found themselves entangled. If she were a different person, born alive and raised in normalcy, she might have found the words to confront him. Or to find peace within herself. Or to live with the love she regrettably holds for him.

So now, standing amongst victors and friends, she can do nothing but watch him bestow softness upon Marianne. Softness that has been kept out of her reach. Softness that has been given unabashedly to all but her. For her, there is only a stare like tangled barbs.

If she allows herself to give it much thought, she finds it all incredibly trite and cliched. If her life were an opera, it would surely be the most reviled piece of floozy tragedy ever penned; even Dorothea wouldn’t enjoy it.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Teach?”

Claude is in two, both halves vibrant against the gray sky, and the two Claudes smile in a way that feels distinctly sad. She blinks and Claude is one, solid man once more. She rubs at her forehead with the heel of her hand, forcing hard against the resolute bone of her skull.

“Yes. Exhausted.”

Marianne comes towards her, raising the flat of her palm like a flag of surrender. Between her fingers, faith magic swirls. There is the smell of lilies and, below that, the smell of battle and blood. On a full stomach, Byleth might have found herself nauseated.

Marianne reaches for her head and Byleth takes a haggard step back. A mistake, she realizes quickly enough. They all stare at her, concern painting their faces in a wash of different hues. Marianne cradles her rejected hand like a bird with a broken wing.

“I must speak with Seteth,” Byleth says, and her gaze flicks, uncontrollably, once over Dimitri. At the sight of his flaxen hair made golden by the sun, she squints and another Dimitri shimmers into focus. This one’s smile differs from the grim stare of the real Dimitri. This one, this other, tilts his head so that the molten current of his hair sweeps back from his forehead, revealing the regal features of his face. He has put on weight, begun to fill out into the king he was born to be.

Internally, she curses, swallows a heave. Externally, she nods curtly, leaves quickly.

Later, she will learn she has suffered a concussion and receive treatment. But, for now, she thinks herself sickened by love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was really struggling with the final chapter of this piece and then I realized that I needed it to be two parts. So, here's the first short burst. Resolution and confessions to come in the final chapter. As always, feel free to drop a comment if you feel so inclined :p


	5. Virga

The war has ended with Edelgard’s death, her insides torn to ribbons by the claw of Areadbhar, and Byleth does not know what will become of her in the peacetime. Alois has suggested she return to mercenary work, Hanneman has suggested she resume teaching, Manuela has suggested she find a rich husband and settle down, Seteth has suggested she align with the church, and everyone else has suggested some variation of the four. But she doesn’t want to anything of the sort. All she really wants to do is fish and forget her troubles, but she can’t even do that since the monastery pond has housed nothing but dead, bloated fish since the Empire’s invasion five years ago.

Now, she sits around a hastily built bonfire in the courtyard of a once magnificent Imperial estate. She isn’t sure what family once owned the estate, but they would certainly be devastated at its current state, overrun and desecrated by the drunken victors of a bloody, damning war. They are two days removed from the end of the war and a three days march away from Garreg Mach.

Byleth rubs at her eyes and finds the imprint of Edelgard, bloodied and savaged, lingering in the muted dark. It is odd, how the woman has stuck to her like a bad taste. Perhaps it was the little voice in her head that had whispered, _the future is now, _at the sight of the emperor’s gored, lifeless form beneath the shadow of Dimitri that was to blame for the unshakeable memory. Edelgard’s had not even been the first death of a former student she had witnessed, nor even the most graphic. Yet—

“You do not look like the victor of war.”

Felix’s dour face seems catlike in the moonlight. Despite the newfound peace, his fingers still linger about the hilt of his sword. She doubts they will ever stray far, no matter how long the peacetime lasts.

“The same could be said of you.”

He scowls, lurks through the dark like a predator on the prowl, off into the night. Sylvain’s amber eyes follow the somber man, even if his attentions are focused on another. They have had a messy fight. They are not speaking to each other. Byleth cares, but knows better than to approach either with her concerns. Each will deny and deflect. If the roles were reversed, she knows she would do the same.

As the night grows late, the crowd withers. Most turn in for the night, heading for the looming estate with intentions to curl into moldered blankets and pillows atop the dusty tiles of the once great hall. Some, like Sylvain, keel backward off their perches around the fire and fall into fitful slumber among the dirt and rotted leaves underfoot. Some remain awake: a handful of soldiers, a group of twittering women she doesn’t know, Hilda, Alois, Mercedes, Catherine, Dimitri.

She knows he watches her from across the fire, but she cannot meet his gaze, thinking of his heavy hand on her breast, between her legs, even as he entertains the attentions of another woman, a stray from the group of twittering things she does not recognize. There has been no time for her usual vices and distractions when there had been a war to end. 

She is mad at him, though she has no concrete reason to be. He has been relentlessly kind since his reformation, often bringing her food when she missed meals and training with her when no other partners were to be found. She has even caught him cleaning her father’s grave, something she has never had the strength to do. But there has been no mention of the things they have done or the confession she spewed. It is as if nothing had ever happened. Perhaps, it is best that way.

She wonders, briefly, loosely, in the way she has learned to in the absence of her friend, how Sothis would have reacted to her dalliance with the king. Would Sothis have praised her gumption for netting, however momentarily, such a prize? Would Sothis have faulted her for falling prey to her desires when her concern should have lain with him, not her body? Would Sothis have spoken softly, sweetly, in comfort of her broken heart? Of course, though, if Sothis were still with her and not within her, none of this would have ever happened. She would have been too self-conscious to do the things she has done if Sothis still saw through her eyes.

The woman entertaining Dimitri hides a giggle behind the smooth sculpture of her hand. She is a willowy thing and soft, like a cotton candy cloud. Her hair is honeysuckle pale and her lips are a fine little bow. A beauty of a woman, truly. All of the women who find themselves in Dimitri’s company are lovely, delicate things, whether they think themselves so or not.

_“It’s not like that with Dimitri,” _Marianne had said, had _protested, _when the suggestion had come up, a week after the liberation of Derdriu, in a conversation with Hilda. Byleth hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but it had been an instance of being in the right place at the right time. She had been entering the library while the two had been exiting and found herself lingering to catch the tails of their words. _“He is a good friend. And he has eyes for none but her.” _

The “her” had gone unidentified, but had become a new source of morbid interest. She never actively sought out Dimitri’s lady friends, but was certainly keen to notice them whenever they came near. At times, she felt a woman obsessed, even though she did little to actively pursue him, her thoughts always teetered towards him, wondering after him and longing for even the dullest of conversations with him. That morning, she had spent all breakfast debating with him the superiority of Alliance-style lances over the traditional Faerghustian models, a topic she had not ever thought about before it had come up in conversation.

“You look lonely.”

A man, one of the soldiers, approaches and, without inquiry, flops onto the ground beside her. He tilts his head back, eyes sloshed with drink, and he grins.

She takes in his form, once, twice, before realizing there is a mild familiarity to him in the heavy set of his brow and the hazel of his eyes. Once, she had pursued him and gotten him and it had not been an altogether unpleasant experience. She doesn’t know his name. It hadn’t mattered then and it doesn’t matter now.

Dimitri’s gaze cuts to her and, for a moment, she considers assenting to the man’s advance here, in his full view. Would he suffer? Would he even care?

“Sleep it off,” Byleth says to the man and then she stands free of the dirt. Her legs ache and her head pangs and she longs for sleep, but she turns from the fire and the estate and heads off into the surrounding woods.

In a few long strides, the woods enclose her like a snug blanket. If she ran now, ran fast, away from this place, how far would she get? With her eyes closed, she feels a stern hand pushing hard between her shoulder blades, off towards the unknown, but, when she bares her sight to the midnight wood around her, there is nothing but forest twitchings. The phantom push is nothing more than a fleeting memory of a time when her father had taught her to swim. When she had protested the cold kiss of the water, he had pushed her, sharp and hard between her shoulder blades, into the lake. And she had learned to swim.

A wind stirs the leaves into a somber symphony. With her eyes to the stars, she listens and does her best to understand their whisperings. Before the dark eyes of the woods, she does not feel the vessel of a Goddess. She does not even feel much like herself.

She thinks of running, of escaping, of shearing off the waves of her hair, of living, haunted but free, like her father did for so long. He had been happy. Hadn’t he?

There is a snuffling to her left, so loud that her body lurches in shock, and a deer emerges from the misty dark: a doe, fattened from the glut of summer abundance. It stops in a patch of weeds, snorts at the brush. It feeds before Byleth, unaware or uncaring of her presence, she doesn’t know. The doe is hungry, but she is starving. It feeds and she breathes in the thick campfire scent of her clothes, longing for that smell to dominate the stink of raw forest. Campfire and laughter and food and drink. Yes, that would be nice.

The deer feeds and Byleth deems to feed on it, to break its back and take of the sweet meat clinging to its ribs and suck the sweetness from its bones so thin and brittle like the withered stems of flowers in drought. Yes, she will kill the doe and she will feed on it and then she will leave this place and the sorrow of it all with her belly full of the forest’s blessing. On her hip, the Sword of the Creator smolders, conveying her ill intent.

But there comes the heavy sound of footfalls and the doe bucks from its snack and races off into the hollow of the forest. Byleth’s stomach rumbles.

“Had your fill of campfire lounging?” Dimitri asks, stepping into the moonlight and moving a small pace from her. If she wanted, she could reach up and trace the curve of his cheek. The lowlight blurs the sharpness of his features, but it cannot diminish his regal beauty, made all the more apparent by the hairstyle he has taken that keeps the messy mop of his hair away from his brow. Bitterly, she wishes him ugly as if a sudden change in his appearance would alleviate her heart’s sickness. In her time, she has taken many beautiful partners, but he is the first she has ever loved. She does not know why. Perhaps, it is his kind soul or her own flirtations with misery.

He smiles at her as if he expects one in return. She does not offer one. She is too tired for forced niceties. 

“Why have you come?”

He steps nearer, ever nearer, standing so close and so tall before her that he eclipses the moon. Its silvery light forms a burning corona around his head. There is a calmness to him that she has not seen since his Academy days. Breathing is something she takes for granted when it comes easily. It is difficult now.

“I would speak to you,” he says. “If you will have me.”

She nods, stiffly, but he does not speak. He takes her face gently between the cool leather of his gloves and stoops to her. Kisses her good and slow like she has always wished he would. Her hands flex out in stiff surprise at the affection and her eyes remain alert and straining. She does not push him away, but she does not return his advance. Perhaps this has how he felt twice when she had made her advance. Warm, but conflicted.

When he draws back in the wake her unresponsiveness, she says, “I do not understand.”

“I love you,” he says. His voice is like fog, heavy and liquidous. His eye is hazy. His hands travel to her shoulders, her arms, move up and down. The movement fails to stave off the chill of the night. This should be a joyous moment, a revelation of serenity. But it isn’t. He has waited too long. She has resolved to forget him.

“I thought I would lose you. I thought you would run away.”

She swallows, frowns.

“Where would I go? What is left for me?”

The question is hardly rhetorical, she expects an answer. Everyone has expectations for her. Surely, he must as well.

“I do not know, but there is a place for you here. With me.”

She does not mean to laugh, but does. Months have passed without a word from him on the subject. If her place is with him, he has done a poor job of welcoming her into it.

His face falls and his touch fades, he says, “You do not feel the same.”

Her blood chills when he draws his arms about himself and tilts his gaze to the sky. There is embarrassment, hurt, and shame intermingling in the blush of his face. She wants to scream. He is so thick, so straw-headed that she could strangle him.

“Dimitri, do you understand what you have put me through? What your silence has done to me?”

It is a hard thing to voice her suffering, like speaking with a tongue coated in sand. His gaze pierces, but his voice is low with soft sorrow. 

“Yes. There is nothing I can say that can undo the hurt I have caused you. But I would try.”

She sighs, rubs at her forehead, pinches the bridge of her nose, says, “You are a foolish man.”

It is not an insult, but a statement of fact. He _is_ a fool, but so is she. They are connected in that aspect, made fate’s fools through circumstances existent before their births.

“Yes.”

“And you love me?”

She holds her breath, but his response is immediate, nearly forceful in the low resonance of his voice.

“Yes.”

The flat, hard line of his mouth reflects her own discomfort with the situation. This is just as difficult for him as it is for her.

“All the more the fool,” she says. Then, “Why now? Why wait?”

His answer is swift.

“Edelgard.”

She crosses her arms, buries her fingers so that her flesh stings. It is always Edelgard. For the past six years, he has lived only for Edelgard, only to end her life and her ambitions. Even now that she is gone, he still thinks of her. Of course.

“I could not tell you the wealth of my feelings while she still breathed. I did not know if… I could not promise myself to you when I did not know how this war would end.”

He finishes in a rushing huff and she takes his words within herself, cradles them to soothe the ache, and considers. For her aching heart, they are enough, but for her shattered resolve? She is unsure.

“And you have kept yourself so surrounded with the attentions of others since Enbarr that I could not find the time to approach you on the subject.”

An excuse, a poor one, that she dismisses with a shake of her head.

“You could have asked for a moment of my time.”

“Ah, I suppose. I did not consider…”

Rubbing at his neck, he trails off and there is the echo of the sweet, bumbling boy who had once made a wish that they would never part.

“You are king. King of all Fodlan.”

Again, she holds her breath for his answer. The trees fall still in their shifting above, as if waiting for his answer in solidarity with her.

“And it is all meaningless without you.”

Her lungs deflate in sudden, whooshing exhale. Is it possible? Perhaps this is all a dream, sent by Sothis to soothe her in her suffering. But, it feels real.

She wants it to be real.

“I intend to make my intentions public in the morning and court you. Properly. If you would have me.”

The details of a public courtship are beyond her scope. She has never maintained a steady partner, not when repeat bedroom visitations are not considered such, has never been courted by the light of day. Her affections and desires have only been pursued in the night and forgotten in the morning.

Byleth has questions, hundreds of thousands of questions, but there is only one left that she needs an immediate answer to.

“And you will stay?

A breeze rises from the forest floor and stirs the weeds and leaves at their feet. Strands of Dimitri’s hair loose from the twisting ponytail he wears. She wonders who has taught him such a fashion and if he will permit her to try her hand at it, to feather her fingers through the golden downy and smooth it over the crown of his skull.

“Stay?”

“Afterwards. You will not leave?”

There is a pain that slickens the shape of his eye and colors his voice as he says, “I will not leave. I will never leave you again. If you would have me.”

And it is enough.

She moves to fill the emptiness between them. One hand she presses against the jut of his armor over his chest. The other, the places, tentatively, against his face, her thumb resting just below the lashes of his eye.

“I would have you.”

Rolling onto her toes, it is easy to kiss him, more familiar than she would have expected, even despite their previous trysts. He buries a hand in her hair, draws her flush against him with the other. His lips are rough against hers, but not as chapped and peeled as she has come to know them. His breath conveys the rich heat of the campfire, thick and heavy against the quick, stolen gasps she takes between kisses. 

Dimitri is an eager, albeit nervous partner, deepening their kiss and setting a faster, more frenzied pace. She responds in kind, looping her arms around his neck until her knees wobble in short warning before weakening entirely. She stumbles from him and the wet separation of their kiss is muffled in the forest. For a moment, she rests her head against his heaving chest and listens to him breathe. His hand in her hair untangles, lowers to her back, and begins to rub in small circles. He could snap her in half if he wanted, but he is so gentle, so careful.

“We should return to the others,” she says and he kisses the top of her head, strokes her back. His sigh ruffles her hair. “I fear they will mount a search party soon.”

She does not fear; she knows. It is one thing for a former professor turned strategist to run off into the woods, but another thing entirely for the once and future king to run off.

“If we must.”

His voice is petulant, nearly a whine. When she raises her head from his chest, she nearly laughs at the scowl on his face. Once more, he takes her face between his hands and stoops to her, pressing a short, chaste kiss to her mouth.

“I love you,” he says.

Byleth blushes. The depth of emotion in his voice is devastating. How could a man so sincere love her?

But she knows better than to question her good luck. She will enjoy it while it lasts, for as long as it lasts.

Dimitri offers his hand to her and she takes it. Her small fingers vanish between his and he squeezes softly.

There, standing hand in hand with the man she loves, fully and deeply in a way that makes her chest ache, Byleth entertains thoughts of a future after the war and a place that might exist for her within it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT IS FINISHED!!!! Yay happy ending!!!!!! I hope you all enjoyed this ride with me lol! I was going to end with some smut, but it just didn't feel right!!! I'll probably post a one-shot with all the work scrapped for this one though :o  
Also, feel free to connect with me on Tumblr at Cazbunnywrites!! I made it a while back and just... never did anything with it but now I am and I'm trying to interact more with the fandom since I really love it and the work that comes out of it!!!  
As always, feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you're thinking!! I loved writing this!!!! I hope you all enjoyed!!!! <3<3


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